Media reveal Mugabe cronies’ graft in parastatals

Zimbabwe - Shocking details of greed, sleaze and looting by powerful players in President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party have been unfolding in Zimbabwe’s domestic media.

Surprisingly, the pro Zanu-PF media, including the state broadcaster, have been breaking most of the reports about party loyalists who have been ripping off parastatals for years.

Some analysts believe the revelations, which have been making front page news, are part of faction fighting within Zanu-PF over who will succeed Mugabe when he dies or retires.

So far most of those exposed as crooks are loyal to Vice-President Joice Mujuru who easily won majority support at provincial Zanu-PF elections late last year.

Although his loyalists were defeated in those provincial elections, justice minister Emmerson Mnangagwa has never abandoned his ambition to replace Mugabe. His supporters control the public media, which are publishing details about the scandalous looting of public funds.

Others in Harare said the exposés, although real, were mainly “propaganda” designed to clean up Zanu-PF’s image as it cannot deliver on election promises it made before last year’s polls.

One of the most shocking revelations is the R5 million monthly salary paid to Cuthbert Dube, the chief executive of the Premier Service Medical Aid Society, which serves civil servants and is regularly unable to pay their medical bills. He has been sacked, but critics called for all his executives to be fired as well seeing they earn exorbitant salaries.

Political analyst Ibbo Mandaza does not believe the exposés are political infighting but are designed to shore up Zanu-PF’s image.

He said looting at parastatals had gone on for decades and that he expected more revelations.